It’s hard to ignore a sensational advertisement. That’s the point, right? To grab your attention and entice you to dig deeper. It seems the more saturated the media market becomes, the more sensational the headline must be to vie for the consumer’s attention.
But where’s the line between being creative and going too far? And does crossing that line negatively impact results?
This morning while signing on to Myspace I saw an ad for “Untraceable,” a new thriller starring Diane Lane as a cyber-crime investigator tasked with tracking down a serial killer who posts live videos of his victims on the internet. Scary, huh?
The plot line alone is enough to sends chills one’s spine, but how about their ad on myspace?
Are you kidding me? It’s a series of 4 thumbnails that read “Come Kill With Me”, “Your Click Could Be Deadly,” “You Are The Murder Weapon,” and “I Am Untraceable.”
Ok, I get it — it’s a horror movie, but this ad seems to go too far in my opinion. Why would you place an ad on a site mainly used by impressionable teenagers that starts out with “Come Kill With Me?”
I understand opening weekend box off numbers are a big deal. These numbers are often reported like sports scores and if a movie doesn’t have a huge opening, it probably isn’t going to do well. (Of course, there are always exceptions…) That’s where the hype machine comes into play.
Studios spend millions on generating buzz for upcoming movies with nifty promotional campaigns. With the entrance of social media into the mainstream, marketers and advertisers have even more tools at their disposal to reach to the consumer.
Generating buzz and creating hype is one thing, but promoting something that starts out with “Come Kill With Me” can’t be a good idea…EVER.
Granted, by me writing about this, the marketers/advertisers succeeded in getting attention, but they lost out on a ticket sale as I will not pay money to see this movie.
Been a while since I last posted, but when I saw this bit of news on CrunchGear, I had to make some time. Any child of the 80’s has a special connection with the Back to the Future franchise. You have to love a movie based on time travel who proposed that by 2015 we’d have flying cars and hover boards. Well, it’s 2008 and it’s pretty safe to say that by 2015 our cars will not be cruising the skies. But at least you can hover board, er, or just hang it on your wall. For a small chunk of change –$30,000–you can do best Marty McFly impersonation. Check out ebay for the auction and full product details, apparently this is “one of the original boards” used in the film. The real question is, when is that Marty McFly jacket going to hit ebay?! Sweeeee
